Escape
by Eve Davidson
Summary: Ponyboy comes back to Tulsa after years of being away to help Johnny with his alcoholism.
1. Chapter 1

Maybe I needed another cup of coffee, but I felt too jittery already. I didn't know why I had decided to come back here, back to this place I had escaped. And it was escape. I got that college scholarship and I never looked back.

Weirdly enough it was Darry who called me and convinced me to come back, for awhile. This wasn't going to be a permanent move, by no means would this be permanent. I'd had enough of Tulsa, believe me. I'd had enough of the gangs and the socio-economic divide. I liked the cities I'd lived in and the little apartments I'd lived in and there was no drama, there was no social strata. There was just me and my editors and my occasional beer at a pub, munching on peanuts and watching sports.

Darry called and asked, in his blunt Darry way, if I would consider coming back, and the reason surprised me, although if I'd thought about it it really shouldn't have. But the truth was I hadn't thought of any of this, not my older brother working himself to death in roofing and doing the odd construction job, not my middle brother lost in the jungles of Vietnam, and not my old friends who were just going to sink in the lower class neighborhoods we all grew up in. I'd just wanted out.

After me and Soda left Darry only had the rest of the gang to focus on. Dally had been sent away for something awhile ago, something involving a mugging and money and maybe drugs, I didn't even know. He'd be gone for awhile. Steve had graduated high school and got shipped off to Vietnam right along with Soda. Johnny, depressed and suicidal and drinking more and more, hadn't passed some psychological test for getting drafted, so I guess he lucked out there. The years of his parents mistreatment paid off in the end. Two-bit didn't get drafted, either, but that was just because his number hadn't come up.

So Darry had called me because he was concerned about Johnny's drinking. I listened to him explain it all in my little apartment in St. Louis, thinking about my upcoming deadlines and wondering what any of them had to do with me anymore.

And now I was back, drinking too much coffee and feeling that funny constricting feeling as I got closer to my old house. It was still Darry's house. I was going to work for the paper in Tulsa, and live with Darry, God help me, and try to help Johnny. And how exactly would I do this? I'd taken some classes in college regarding psychology and alcoholism, and Johnny was pretty unlucky, having genetic predisposition and environment to contend with.

I had a few bags that the cab driver helped me carry to the front porch, and I thanked him and paid him and just stood on the porch, feeling like a lost 14 year old again. Things even smelled the same, like eggs frying and sunlight on grass and old cars. The smell of home. And what I didn't expect was to sense my parents near for the first time in over a decade, and their presence surprised me and brought tears to my eyes, which stung until I blinked them away.

"Ponyboy," It was Darry, and he looked older. There were lines around his eyes and his hair had receded a bit, and he didn't look quite like the strong older brother I remembered.

"Hi, Darry," I said, wishing Soda were here to be the middleman. I pictured the smoky jungle scenes of Vietnam that they showed on the news, tried to picture my happy-go-lucky brother there with a gun in his hand. I couldn't seem to do it.

I went in and found things pretty much the same as when I had left. It was just quieter. The T.V. wasn't even on. No one was here but me and Darry. The house used to be full, radios and T.V.s blaring, people knocking over lamps and knick knacks.

Darry offered me a beer and I accepted, and we both sat down in the living room to watch some sports. I sipped my beer and thought about Johnny, but I was too tired to deal with any of it today. Tomorrow, I'd start to wade through the mess he's made of his life. I remembered when we were younger and he would cry and say he wanted to kill himself, and how cold I'd feel when he said that.

Darry and I didn't say too much to each other, but we never really had that much to say. It wasn't a comfortable silence, but I tried to remember that I was an adult now, no longer the spacey 14 year old that Darry had to look after. But it was hard to break the feeling of those old roles, and I felt it again, felt my 14 year old self trying to please him, and usually failing.


	2. Chapter 2

The next morning I was sitting at the kitchen table, drinking coffee and smoking a cigarette, when Darry came in from the bedroom. When I was younger, when I lived here, he was always awake before me. But I was feeling kind of anxious, and couldn't sleep.

"Morning," he said, nodding at me, pouring himself some coffee. I watched him, watched the ripple of muscles beneath his T-shirt. I peered at him through the smoke. I couldn't help feeling guilty about the way I left this life and never looked back, but wasn't that what he wanted for me? He wanted me to get the scholarship and go to college and do something, be something other than a greaser scraping together a living, and I had done that. So why was I feeling guilty?

I sipped my coffee, and I guess I drank it like a kid would, with a ton of sugar and plenty of cream, anything to kill that bitter taste of the coffee. But like an adult I needed that jolt of caffeine. I tried to remember that I was an adult and didn't need to explain myself to Darry anymore, and I understood that a lot of what I was feeling was my own hang-ups and had nothing to do with him. He didn't look angry with me, or bitter that I had taken off and had barely spoken to him in the years that I had been gone. He was calmly reading his newspaper and sipping his black coffee.

I finished that cup of coffee and immediately wanted another one. Maybe I was the addict and not Johnny. I was always like that, I smoked like a fiend, at least when I was younger. I'd tried to lay off the cigarettes a little bit now, what with all they were saying about them and they were getting a little pricey. I poured myself another cup and felt guilt over Johnny now. Darry could take care of himself, always could, himself and everybody else. But Johnny was so….I don't know, fragile. I remembered the day I left for college, how he had been at the house along with everybody else except Soda. Soda had already been shipped out. I remembered that resigned look in Johnny's eyes. He wouldn't stop me, he'd never say a word to stop me from going, but I could see that he was going to miss me. And I'd left and ignored him, too.

"What was your plan for today?" Darry said, and he sounded so calm, so reasonable, and some of that edge I remembered from when I lived here was gone.

"Well, " I said, sipping more coffee, feeling more of the caffeine rush for my brain, smoking my cigarette to calm my nerves, " I was going to have a meeting with my editor tomorrow. Today I figured I'd go and see Johnny," I realized as I said it that I had no idea where Johnny would even be. Was I thinking for a moment to check out the places he would go to when we were teenagers? The pool halls and the vacant lots? Johnny was 25 now, and I had no idea what his life was like, other than he had a drinking problem.

"Does he, does he work?" I said. Darry set the paper down and finished off the last of his coffee, and I heard him swallow.

"Not usually. Oh, he gets the odd job here and there, but these days he isn't that reliable. He probably won't be working. He's staying in one of the rooms at Buck's old place,"

Darry rushed off to work, like usual. I watched him drive off in a newer but still old ford. I hopped into the shower, letting the steam loosen my muscles and my nerves. This would be okay. I could be here for awhile. I was 23 now, a college graduate, a writer. I wasn't a lost kid grieving the loss of his parents. I wasn't 14. I had to try and remember that.

Dressed in slacks and a white button up shirt, casual loafers on my feet, my usual attire for the past couple of years. It was so different from how I used to dress when I was a greaser. Gone were the faded and torn jeans, the soft T-shirts, the beat up converse. Gone, too, was the grease from my hair. It was clean, a bit long but nothing like when I was a hood. I wasn't that hoody little lost kid anymore, but he was closer here than he had been in a long time.

I was renting a car here for now, and I drove it toward Buck's old place. It was a fairly decent rental car and I was headed into a pretty bad section of town. Where Buck lived was even worse than where Darry lived. I parked and got out and walked toward the building and I realized that I was nervous. I was nervous about seeing Johnny. I tried to shake off that feeling and laugh, but I couldn't quite do it. So I let the nervousness come with me up to the door, and I asked the first guy I saw if he knew what room was Johnny Cade's.

The guy, a tough looking older hood if I ever saw one, looked at me skeptically and didn't answer. After a moment I realized what he was thinking. I glanced down at my crisp white dress shirt and pressed slacks and realized that I looked like someone vaguely official. Whoever this old hood was with his straw blond hair greased back and old jeans rolled up at the cuffs, he was protecting Johnny. I stifled a laugh.

"I'm an old friend of his," I said, and I slouched and ran a hand through my hair, put on my old bored tough look that we used to reserve for strangers and cops. I wanted my body language to get it through to this guy, maybe more than my words, that I used to be one of them.

Still nothing, the guy was eyeing me like I was a cop. I mentioned the street both me and Johnny used to live on, my brother Soda being away in Vietnam, anything to get past this troll at the bridge. It was Soda's name that did it. When you look like a movie star and your name is Sodapop, well it tends to stick in people's minds.

"Soda's your brother?" he said, the skeptical look fading away at last, "how's he doing?"

"Oh, you know, we don't hear much," I said, just wanting to know which room was Johnny's before I started knocking on every damn door in the place.

"Yeah, that's too bad. My brother was in Korea," he said, and now I could hear the drawl, that Oklahoma drawl I thought I'd escaped for good. I tried to nod sympathetically, and not impatiently.

"You're friends with Johnny?" he said, now that we were having a real conversation. I nodded again.

"He's a good kid," he said, with a hint of something threatening in that, as though I wanted to hurt him or something. But Johnny did that to people, made them feel protective. I knew that and I didn't blame the guy.

"His room is up there, first one on the left," he said, and I thanked him, and took off up the stairs.

I knocked but there was no answer. Maybe he wasn't even here, who knew? I knocked again and again, no answer. I tried the door and it wasn't locked. I went in.

I don't know what I expected, maybe empty bottles of beer or whiskey strewn around everywhere, maybe Johnny puking in a corner or something. The room was dark because the shade in the single window was drawn shut. There was a bed and a chair, that was it. There were clothes hanging over the back of the chair, fairly neatly hanging there, and a figure asleep in the bed. Nothing else. No empty bottles, no signs of death and destruction. I flipped on the light. Johnny was asleep, curled up away from me, mostly covered by the thin blanket but I saw his jet black hair against the white blanket.

"Johnny?" I said, and he didn't stir. He used to wake so easily. When we were kids, teenagers, he'd almost bolt awake at his name. Maybe he was hung over. I walked over to the bed and touched his shoulder. He flinched away from me, but in his sleep. That flinching from being touched was still there, so deeply ingrained in him that he did it in his sleep, because he wasn't awake.

"Johnny," I said, shaking him as I said his name. Now he was waking up, and the flinching away was more conscious. He mumbled something that I couldn't understand and groaned and curled up. Was it so early? I glanced at my watch. 8 a.m. That was early, and I had no idea how long he'd been sleeping for. Maybe it was cruel to be waking someone hung over this early. I knew what I was talking about. I'd been hung over in my time, I knew the pulsing, pounding headache, the thirst, the inability to move. But I didn't know what alcoholics experienced. Were their hangovers worse? Maybe they didn't get hung over.

"Hey, Johnny," I said, and he mumbled something unintelligible again. I shook him gently.

"Leave me alone, Ponyboy," he said, almost as though he were speaking in a dream. Maybe he thought he was dreaming. Didn't he realize he hadn't seen me in six years?


End file.
